Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is repeating his gravy train mantra even though the 2014 budget has the same tax hike he backed in the past.

The financial staff (foreground) present the budget during city budget meeting at City Hall. Nov. 26, 2013.

Published on Mon Nov 25 2013

He can’t have it both ways. When Toronto Mayor Rob Ford delivered a 2.5-per-cent property tax hike last year he declared his budget “a huge victory.” But now he’s calling a tax increase of exactly the same size, proposed for next year, to be an “absolutely atrocious” embarrassment.

What’s truly atrocious is Ford’s hypocrisy — a fraud made all the worse in knowing that a large part of the latest 2.5-per-cent jump in residential property tax would come courtesy of the mayor’s Scarborough subway obsession. If not for Ford’s ill-judged subway plan, Toronto’s 2014 property tax hike would be just 2 per cent. That’s the same as what Ford delivered this year.

There is no dramatic shift in direction. Yet somehow the mayor is attempting to spin the budget recommended by city staff on Monday as a dramatic revival of the “gravy train.” According to Ford, this is what happens without his steady hand guarding the cash box, even though it’s been only days since he lost much of his mayoral authority. “As soon as they reduced my powers,” he moaned, “all they’re doing is going back to the old tax-and-spend ways.”

What nonsense. Ford would have people believe city hall was “locked in” to a 1.75-per-cent tax increase until just a week ago, when his history of drug abuse, public drunkenness, criminal associations and all-around idiotic behaviour led an overwhelming majority of city council to slash his powers.

The 1.75 per cent tax hike existed nowhere except in Ford’s fantasies. Toronto is a corporation with a complex $9.6-billion operating budget. And it’s ludicrous to think the budget was hurriedly re-written, this past week, by a spendthrift staff hoping to take advantage of Ford’s fall. The 2.5-per-cent property tax hike proposed for next year is the result of months of careful analysis and responsible trade-offs — concepts alien to Ford’s way of doing business.

For the average Toronto household this means a $64 tax hike, with $28 of that used to cover the growing cost of existing operations. Another $23 would go toward providing new and enhanced services. These include hiring more paramedics, expansion of the Toronto Transit Commission to cope with record-high ridership, more arts funding, and money to run three new community centres and two new libraries. That’s city-building, not “gravy.”

Finally, the average household would be stung for $13 in new tax to cover the cost of Ford’s Scarborough subway folly. A light-rail line could have been had for free. By the time Ford’s subway is done it will cost the average household at least $1,200. That’s the real gravy train. Thanks, Mayor Ford — hypocrite-in-chief.

From now until the next election he will screech and preach about this budget. But, as with so much to do with Ford, there’s no substance to his bluster.

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